Practical Shelving

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a lovely week last week, sorry I was MIA { except for one post } I couldn't find my card reader to my camera to upload pictures and time just got away from me. With that said we have been more productive over here at CLH. Remember our bathroom project we've slowly been working on? When we last left off, we installed a new sink to our existing cabinet, which instantly made our bathroom feel fresh. Well last weekend the bathroom officially got painted Bedford Grey from Martha Stewart Living color matched to Olympic Paint. i'm in love with this color!! Its made our one and only small bathroom feel so much bigger!! I love when paint does that!. 

This past weekend we installed shelves in our bathroom. At first I bought the EKBY Valter brackets from Ikea, but those had to be painted white. As much as I love painting, I decided to head back to Ikea and exchange those for brackets that were already white. I eneded up buying the EKBY Stodis in white from only fifty cents per bracket, super cheap, yes. It's cool that they are were so affordable, but I love the fact they look so clean since we opted for the exposed look in our bathroom, like our Pinterest inspiration picture. We decided three shelves in our bathroom would be perfect. Here's our new shelves. For now bath room stuff is just 'on the shelves' no pretty styling done yet. We still need to removed the stickers from the shelves { little things like that, lol } However, you can see how much storage space we added in our bathroom! Each shelf is over two feet long, so we added over eight feet of usable space in our bathroom :) This makes me a very happy girl. 

I love our new shelves! I'm so happy with the additional storage space for practical bathroom stuff { face wash, lotions etc } and space for pretty too { candles, perfume, pictures etc.} We are almost done with our bathroom. Still left: clean bathroom, re-paint trim, buy artwork or create some, hang shower curtain. Oh I also love our new acrylic containers from the container store! Its had to tell in the above pictures, but they are such a great size and are very nice! I'm so glad I found a pretty alternative to glass. Love glass, but acrylic works so much better for our lives { baby, tween, clumsy husband, you get the point! }

Hopefully our bathroom will be in ship shop shape all ready from a complete reveal very soon, maybe next Monday :) 

What do you think of our practical bathroom shelves? Anything on your project list taking longer than expected like our bathroom? 

Bathroom Progress

I'm so happy there's a little bathroom progress to share! as I mentioned before our plan was to replace our old bathroom sink with a new one and keep our existing cabinet. We deiced to keep the existing cabinet for three reasons: #1. It was solid wood #2. I painted the wood a rich brown awhile back and we still liked the look # 3. We wanted the update to be cheap. 


We bought a new sink counter from HD Home Supply, love that store. They have very competitive prices for builder grade /style updates. We always go there when we need to rent something { Floor Sanders, Power Snake } because their prices are so much lower then Home Depot & The staff is knowledgeable. We bought a simple white sink from there for only $ 53.00, such a good deal. Hasani installed our new sink with ease and no drips. He's working on a how to install as sink post, as I'm writing this post. Oh we opted to keep our faucet, since it was a teeny upgrade and still new-ish { 2.5 years old) Here's our old bathroom sink. In the pictures its hard to tell how dingy it was. 

The new sink has made such a huge difference, our old sink was a tacky faux marble cream color, it was stained. No matter how much a I scrubbed and bleached the sucker it never look clean. I'm in love with our new clean white sink against the dark wood cabinet. I actually walked by our bathroom and few times and flipped the light on just to see how nice it looked. I need to do a little repair work above the sink, our old sinks backslash was much taller then our new one. The repair is such an easy peasy fix. 

Sorry for the dark pictures! Our bathroom has very little natural light, so why I painted it the ugly sea foam green is beyond me. I also picked up this little blue soap dish holder from West Elm on Black Friday. I'm more on a pump soap kind of gal, but loved the little pop of blue around the base. And it was only .97 cents, so I said what the heck and bought it.

As I mentioned before, I planned on painting our Bathroom again making this the third time I painted the bathroom, second time this year!. After much debate with Hasani, we decided to paint the bathroom Bedford Grey by Martha Stewart Living. We had the paint color matched to Olympic Paint, in satin finish at Lowes. . My goal was to paint the bathroom over the Thanksgiving Holiday, but we just got to busy and I never made the time. We still need to take down the old hardware, patch holes and then I can paint the bathroom. The gallon on paint is sitting in our garage waiting to be opened

{ Bedford Grey Martha Stewart Living }

I also bought six EKBY Valter brackets from Ikea that need to be painted white. I bought them from $3 bucks each, so I spent $ 18 dollars on them. I'm going to go to Lowes and buy the wood or MDF board for the shelves, I'll have them make the cuts for me. 

I wanted to buy the EKBY Stilig Brackets, but they weren't in stock a few weekends ago. There now back in stock, so I'll go to Ikea over the weekend and exchange the ones I bought for the ones I want. They're a dollar more each, but the require no painting so its a tie.

I can finally start seeing some progress in our tiny bathroom and boy does it feel good! Plus its nice to see a small bathroom update upgrade can have such a nice impact on in our bathroom. Its already feeling more fresh and modern-ish. 


What do you think our our little sink refresh?

Bathroom Plans

Now that we have new West Elm hardware { bought it at a super discounted price!, see here } My promise { to myself } is to paint the bathroom again { this be the 2nd time this year } over the Thanksgiving Holidays, hang the hardware and hang some shelves. My BFF and her baby are coming to visit Thanksgiving Weekend and we are planning a trip to Ikea! To her Ikea is a religion, and its our first time going together so it should be a FUN time. I'm planning on buying shelves from Ikea. I recently pinned, this pretty bathroom for shelving inspiration, LOVE it. Its perfect for my tiny bathroom, I have the same tiny wall next to our toilet. I love all those shelves, perfect mix of practical and pretty. I also like the bracket hardware underneath the shelves, very cute.

{ via here }

Most likely we'll do 3-4 shelves, all stacked like in the picture, currently our extra bathroom toilet paper resides in our linen closet, but I now want to keep in the bathroom. I like these flexible white totes from the container store, perfect for toilet paper! Its cute and durable for a house full of boys. 

I also love clear storage containers, and think thees stacking ones would be perfect for me. I'm a product girl and love products and some products have to stay in the bathroom. All my other girly product stuff is my top dresser drawer in my bedroom { here }

I also like these simple acrylic bath canisters also from The Container Store, simple cute and space saving. I plan to use a mix of clear plastic containers and woven baskets on the shelves. 

I placed my order order with The Container Store yesterday, thanks so a 10% off coupon I saved a little moolah. The closest  Container Store is around 70miles away, so I decided to buy it online. I do that a lot these days, with the little guy now here I like things be delivered to our doorstop, it frees up the weekends. We also place on replacing the dated cream marble style vanity sink top with a white one. The sink base is fine its solid wood, when we bought our home I painted over the wood with dark chocolate paint and still love the look. We have boring beige cream tile floors; that wont be replaced any time soon, so I want our new wall color to compliment our floors and not work against them. I've been leaning towards a mushroom greige color. I really like Martha Stewart Living paint colors, I'm currently leaning towards two options. Both colors are neutral,and should some warmth into our bathroom 

Cobblestone 

Pottery Clay 

Right now I'm not sure if I'll keep our current white waffle shower curtain, or get a new one. I think after the walls are painted, the shelves hung and a few minor tweaks are made I'll decide. Next week is Thanksgiving { it came too fast this year } so I'll be counter-top shopping / purchasing and buying paint over the weekend. 

Are you working on any bathroom projects? Is your bathroom in need of a refresh like mine is?

What the What?!?

Your not going to believe this post, but trust me the following is all true and I have the proof. I'm regular stalker of West Elm, I go on their site like it's magazine. Please tell me I'm not the only one? Any who, I was making my daily lookie lou on their website and decided to check out the bath stuff. I've been meaning to update our bathroom for quite sometime, and even painted it earlier this year. Well I hate our bathroom paint color, I blame it on prego hormones in choosing the wrong paint color, I decided to look on for paint color / bathroom inspiration & ideas. I clicked on the 'Lighting & Hardware' and saw that the Textured Bathroom hardware was on sale. It was on sale for a crazy AMAZING good deal, all of it for only $ 1.99 per piece, towel bars, paper towel holder, towel ring all for $ 1.99 each!! ON SALE! 

I didn't believe my eyes, there's no way it was that cheap! I happily placed everything in my cart. I bought 2 towel bars { one 18' one 24" } the paper towel holder, and towel ring, my total before tax and shipping was only $ 7.96. I know your sipping your coffee or tea in utter disbelief, right? Well here's the screen print proving it was only $ 1.99 for each item. The crazy thing is these sale items weren't in the 'sale' section of the website, they were mixed in with the regular items? Odd huh? Well, went I went on the next day to see if they were still on sale { so I could blog  & tweet about them } but they were back to full price. It must have been some typo, but West Elm honored the price and shipped everything to my door a week later. Here's a screen print of the of the sale.

Now a closer up view, so you can see the price. 

Even Hasani was in disbelief, until he saw the packing slip. I think he thought I went on a little West Elm bathroom spending spree lol. Ok, I know I sound silly, but I actually screamed with excitement when my package arrived. I opened each box and smiled with GLEE, and joy and thankfulness! Aren't these gorgeous and not oh so typical bathroom hardware! I love how they add some glam with their shiny finish, they also reminds me our my jewelry tree and branch candle holder. I'm super in love with this hardware, too bad I didn't see the towel hook on the website, would have loved to buy that on sale { I know you just rolled your eyes, I'm rolling mine too } I'll have to make a strop in the store this weekend.

I love that the toilet paper rolls just slip on for a clean look

See, they cute little bags attached to all the hardware, the bags hold the screws and anchors! I love that they thought about the smallest details in the packaging.

In all honestly, its the push I need to make bathroom less blah and actually pretty. So here's my deep heartfelt apologies to all friends and family that's had to use my bathroom for the past 6+ mos! I'm sorry! I promise to make our bathroom, practical and pretty and chic! 


Now for the fun part, lets do the math. If I would have bought the Textured Bathroom Hardware at full price I would have paid $ 109.00, but I only paid $ 7.96 + Shipping + Tax, my total was only $ 13.96!!

What do you think of our new bathroom hardware?

Have you come across any crazy good deals lately that made you scream in delight?

Bathroom Update: Cutting Edge & All the Trimings.

My Sunday was all about cutting in with paint and fabric trimmings, yup and unlikely duo. On Sunday I stoped in Joann's looking to get started on possibly adding rick rack to our white cotton shower curtain { read more about the idea here } Joann's has a great selection of rickrack. I loved looking at all the colors.

I put together a possible color combination of rick rack together,  I liked various shades of blue . But I wasn't entirely sold of the blue color combination and couldn't find any grey rick rack! And grey is a MUST in our bathroom. The were a few other ladies in the rick rack section with me, most likely thinking I'm crazy for taking pictures! Oh well, got to remember the colors and of course share with all of you.

Next I looked in the trim section which sales the trim by the yard. I loved all the pom poms! However they wont be making an appeqrance in the bathroom, I know for a fact Mr. CLH would nix the idea { he loved the mini pom poms on the giraffes }

Right now I'm not sure if we'll go with rick rack for this project or I might just add trim. I like the idea of added nice thick trim to our basic waffle weave white shower curtain or adding wide grosgrain ribbon. Either way, I plan on making a thrifty decision since our bathroom update is a mere 100 bucks.

via here.

We finally choose the paint color for our little blah box of a bathroom. As I mentioned before, we were looking at Martha Stewart's paint color line, and narrowed the colors down to three. In the end we decided to go with the color Rainwater. The color is a combination of soft green with pretty light blue undertones. We had the paint color matched at Lowes using Olympic paint ( in home we use Olympic paint & Valspar). Instead of breaking out the rollers, opted to cut in first which makes the whole painting process much easier. Don't worry everyone the paint is Low VOC and I wore a mask :) Gotta protect my lungs and our baby. I loved how the color looked when first applied and loved it even more after it dried. I was a little hesitant first because its a dramatic change going from a beige box to living in color. Here's how the color looks so far in the bathroom, Mr CLH will be painting all the high areas and low, since my bumps in the way. In the pictures below the color looks more blue, buts on more of the green side.

The 'paint girl' did and amazing job of color matching the Martha Stewart color, the very top corner is the swatch I gave her. Of course I some how lost my large swatch of the color, so she gets extra props. On Saturday we found a nice thick bathroom mat of the bathroom. I'm in love with it! So this weeks agenda will be to finish painting the bathroom & Mirror and seeing how we like the bath mat. This is one of those slowing going projects since were also working on a few projects. Here's a more true representation of the color Rainwater.

What do you think of the bathroom color so far? Too dark for such a small space? Or do you like?

{ follow our bathroom progress & ideas part 1, part 2 }

Bathroom Update: Choosing Colors & More

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned we plan on giving our bathroom a mini update. We decided to start with the color palette. We began our color search by checking out Martha Stewart's new color line. I love how she has a mini booklet full of her color line.

We narrowed down three potential colors for the wall. I placed the color samples near the mirror to get a better idea of how the color will look against our white baseboards (which will also get refreshed). We don't don't get a lot of natural sunlight in this room, so we went off how the color looks with the bathroom light. As I mentioned before we want to add color into the room, so I'm really excited about the three colors we are considering. From top to bottom: River Mist, Artesian Well & Rainwater.

After looking at the colors for a while, we are leaning towards Rainwater. With both like the soft blue green color.

In addition to choosing a new paint color for our bedroom, I've been looking at pretty wall hooks. I started my search at Anthropologie fir ideas. I've seen similar hooks at Cost Plus, unfortunately the don't have pictures of their hooks online. I really like the hooks below and think they will add a nice touch to our bathroom.

{ via here }

Originally we planned on replacing our white waffle weave shower curtain with something more colorful. However, since were doing our mini bathroom update on a budget of $100 I thought adding rick rack to our existing shower curtain would add colorful punch.

{ via here }

Over the weekend, we'll be painting the bathroom, adding a punch of color to our basic shower curtain and hopefully I'll find some pretty hooks.

Would you add rick rack to a plain shower curtain or curtains to add punch at little cost? If so, what color or colors would you go with?

The Next Project

A couple of days ago i cleaned out our linen closet and gave it a nice update. Transforming our linen closet made me want to freshen up our bathroom. We've completed a bathroom few updates since moving into our home two years ago. Here's what we have done so far: New faucet, bathroom hardware, painted the cabinet dark brown, new mirror and new shower curtain, fresh paint. With all those new additions are bathroom still remained BLAH. Our main objective for our bathroom is Color!  Here's our BLAH bathroom.

 Mr. CLH and I began working on our plan to give our bathroom a mini update a major one is still far off into the future. We want to paint the bathroom a soothing color add shelving and make the bathroom feel fresh. The shelf we currently have is hollow and can only hold a few items not very practical. While I like our current white waffle weave shower curtain, I'm thinking our small bathroom could use a dose of color with a new shower curtain. We plan on completing our bathroom update on a budget. Our budget spend less than $100 bucks. We plan on keeping what works and mixing in new items.

Bathroom Wants: New Shower Curtain? New Wall Color, Bathroom Hooks for Towels, Shelves, DIY Art Work, Bath Mat, Shampoo Holder, and new light bulbs!

We hope by layering in more color in our small bathroom, the small space will feel fresh airy and larger. I'm going to start looking at paint samples and shower curtains this weekend and will keep you posted on our progress

What's next on your project list?